Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Investment Club

Our main order of business tonight was planning how to cash out five members. For various reasons, all the founders decided to leave (some moved away, some are starting families), so the club is shrinking from twelve members to five. Those five members account for over 60% of the club's holdings, so cashing them out requires selling off holdings.

The net result was that the club will sell off ten stocks, and partially sell three other stocks, to cash out the departing members and rebalance the remaining members and portfolio. In one sense, this is good for the club. Until this, we were settling into maintenance mode, which isn't as interesting. Now the club is back to looking for stocks.

I also brought up the possibility that I will move and leave the club. Since I've only been in for eight months, my holdings are far easier to cash out.

On the way to the meeting, the recruiter from Amazon called back, and schedule round two of the interview process - evidently they will mail a programming problem to me, and request the solution back in 90 minutes. Sounds interesting...

Anyway, two members of the investment club previously worked at Amazon, so I asked them what they thought of it. Their responses sounded similar and were generally positive, but I could also sense some hesitation short of a hearty recommendation. Joanna kept telling me to make sure I ask about the time commitment, because some groups have a rotating pager for service calls. Eric emphasized the craziness, but also said he was there in the boom "get big quick" days. Both sounded like me describing my time at Microsoft: busy, exciting, but with a dark side - unstructured, chaotic, grueling. And of course, better in the past tense: sure I liked it, but not enough to stay there. So, maybe this isn't something I'd really want to pursue.